


as with you, so with me

by portraitofemmy



Series: Queliot Week 2019 [7]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 01, get-together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofemmy/pseuds/portraitofemmy
Summary: Quentin’s five years old the first time he gets a bruise on his body that isn’t his.He’s too young to understand it, really. He just knows his face hurts, and he didn’t do anything to earn it, and it’s notfair. His father tries to explain it to him, but what can a 5 year old understand of the concept of soulmates, of being one-of-two bodies, forever linked.Queliot Week Day 7- Soulmates





	as with you, so with me

**Author's Note:**

> Thus ends Queliot Week! Thanks to everybody who’s read along with me, it’s been a wild smutty ride. We end here with something soft instead, with some soulmates in a canon universe.
> 
> Thanks as ever to the wonderful [saltandpepperbox](https://saltandpepperbox.tumblr.com/) for cheering me on so much through this whole process.

Quentin’s five years old the first time he gets a bruise on his body that isn’t his. 

He’s too young to understand it, really. He just knows his face hurts, and he didn’t do anything to earn it, and it’s not _fair_. His father tries to explain it to him, but what can a 5 year old understand of the concept of soulmates, of being one-of-two bodies, forever linked. 

It happens on and off from then on, with enough regularity that his parents whisper about it when they think Quentin can’t hear. “She must get into a lot of fights,” Quentin says at age 7, because his parents refer to his soulmate as a girl and he has no reason to think otherwise at that time. So he reads books about warrior princesses, and clever little Jane Chatwin, and doesn’t notice his parents worry about the handprints on his arms.

The first time Quentin really understands, really has any cause to worry, he’s 12. It’s a Friday night, and he was meant to go to the movies with Julia, but instead he ends up face down on the living room floor, screaming in pain as someone, somewhere in the world, takes a belt to his soulmate’s back. His father holds his hand, and he’s old enough to feel ashamed that he’s crying, and young enough that he just wants his dad to make it go away.

“I should help her,” he says hours later, once the bleeding has stopped, and his father’s helped him bandage up. “Wherever she is, she needs my help.”

“You are helping her,” his father says sadly. “You’re sharing her pain. What you take into yourself is pain she doesn’t have to feel.”

It’s possible that ‘hurting for someone is equal to loving them’ wasn’t the best lesson for him to internalize at such a young age. 

By the time puberty hits and depression rears its ugly head, the bruises that don’t belong to him have started to become less frequent. Quentin doesn’t want to miss them, but he does. It feels selfish and ugly and cruel, of _course_ he doesn’t want his soulmate hurting. But they were indelible proof, weren’t they, that there was _some purpose_ to Quentin’s fucking stupid life. That if he could share someone else’s pain than there was maybe a reason to keep living. 

It’s not enough, sometimes.

He gets institutionalized, and the doctors and counselors all talk about how selfish an act suicide is, how cruel it is to make your soulmate suffer. Quentin, who’s numb to everything, feels a twinge of guilt at the idea of hurting someone but–

Well. If it was his job to _share their pain_ then they could take on just a little of his. Because he hurts all the fucking time.

It gets better.

Then it gets worse again, then better again.

Quentin’s soulmate does something stupid which results in a broken arm, and Quentin learns to write with his left hand.

He goes to college and every day, for the first year, he hopes he’ll meet someone and just _know them_. But no one ever meets their soulmate and just knows, it takes weeks, months, sometimes _years_ for people to find out, to notice a scar or a bruise or a papercut that looks too familiar.

When he wanders across the sun-drenched lawns of Brakebills, stumbling towards the boy stretched out _long and lean and lovely_ on the low wall. There’s no moment of lightning realization. He meets Eliot Waugh and thinks _woah_ and _how can you be comfortable in pants that tight_ and also maybe _hi, can I follow you forever?_ But it doesn’t mean anything special.

Why would it?

Then, months later, the knifemaker runs his blade over Quentin’s palm, and Alice’s, and Margo’s and nothing happens. It’s all shaping up to be very anticlimactic, but world stops when he slices into Eliot’s palm and Quentin cries out, as droplets of blood from two sliced hands hit the ground. Alice’s gasp and Margo’s quiet “oh holy fuck” break the silence, but Quentin can’t look away from Eliot’s pale, stricken face.

“I can’t marry your daughter,” Eliot gasps out, eyes not leaving Quentin’s face, and it’s not exactly true. Nothing’s changed, they still need to kill the Beast and the knife is still the only way to do that, and it’s not exactly like before they were operating under the illusion that this random farm girl might be Eliot’s soulmate. Nothing’s changed, except... everything’s changed. 

There’s privacy to be found in the knifemaker’s workshop and they retreat there, to– talk? What the fuck did you do in this situation? Finding your soulmate was supposed to be a joyous occasion, and like everything else it was now tainted by the threat of the Beast. Quentin sits on the bench near the work table, drawing his knees up to his chest as he watches Eliot pace around the little space, long legs taking him from one side of the room to the other quickly.

Quentin can’t imagine he’s anything but a disappointment to Eliot, who deserved a soulmate as well– regal, as he was. He deserves someone who would take him to... London and Paris and know what kinds of things you did in those places besides chase children’s stories. Eliot must be thinking along the same lines, because he rounds on Quentin asks, voice bitter, “Are you even _gay?_ ”

“No. I mean. I’m bi? I think I’m bi. It’s the 21st century, Eliot. Everyone’s a little bisexual.”

Eliot snorts, rolling his eyes and resuming his pacing. “Yeah, wow, that’s an overwhelming reassurance, thank you.”

“I slept with you!” Quentin points out, because, well. That had definitely happened, it happened like... less than a week ago.

“You slept with _Margo_ , I happened to be in the bed.”

“Right, because I tripped on my way to her and landed with your cock in my mouth!” 

This does at least make Eliot freeze in his furious pacing, looking at Quentin with a stricken expression. “I don’t remember that.” 

Quentin winces, embarrassed, drawing his knees closer to his chest. “Yeah, well. Probably wasn’t very memorable.”

“I doubt that,” Eliot says quietly, and then he seems to fold in a little, deflating. His shoes click on the workshop floor as he comes over to sit next to Quentin, inches from him. He’s close enough that Quentin can feel the heat radiating off of him, feels drawn to it like a moth to flame. It’s always been like this, wanting to fall into Eliot’s gravity and not knowing how to let himself. No wonder. 

Fuck.

“You’re angry with me,” Quentin hedges, because it certainly feels like it. 

But Eliot shakes his head, rubbing his hands on his legs. When he looks up, there’s that flash of vulnerability Quentin’s seen once before, when Eliot told him about discovering magic. “I’m scared,” Eliot admits. “It can’t have escaped your notice that I’m pretty fucked up, Q. I never thought I’d meet my soulmate. I honestly thought I’d die first, or he would.”

It makes Quentin wince, thinking of the long scar he has on his own back. There’s a dawning sense of horror, looking into Eliot’s big hazel eyes. “My parents used to worry about that, when I’d– end up all black and blue... Eliot, I’m so sorry, oh my god.”

“You–” Eliot chokes, and then he’s reaching out to take ahold of Quentin’s arm. Quentin let’s him, then shies away a little when Eliot’s fingers brush under the long sleeve, touching the silvery-white scars on the inside of Quentin’s arms. “You tried to kill yourself _so many times_ , Q.”

“Not that many,” Quentin mutters, looking away, drawing his arm back to his side. 

“Listen, as the one person in the world who’s genetically bound to feel your pain, _one time_ is too many,” Eliot snaps, and Quentin winces. “I was so– so angry at you, the first time. Didn’t you know you were hurting me too! Didn’t you care? But then... I just. I just wanted to help. And then I just wanted to forget.”

“I’m sorry,” Quentin breathes, and he can’t look at Eliot. “If it makes you feel better, when I was in those– when I did that, I was genuinely thinking you’d be better off without me. You in the abstract, not you specifically, obviously, I didn’t know you. Just that... whoever it was would probably be better off without getting stuck with all my bullshit–”

Eliot cuts off Quentin’s babble by taking his hand again. Quentin looks down at Eliot’s hand, long and slender and graceful in his own, which feels clunky in comparison. “I’m so glad I got to meet you, Q,” Eliot says, and it’s maybe the most sincere Quentin’s ever heard him be. _Things aren’t usually worth caring about._

With some limited but important exceptions. 

“Hopefully the Beast doesn’t kill us before–” Before what? Before they get to actually know each other as soulmates, before they get to find out how good it could really be? He chickens out, because he still can’t help but feel inadequate in the face of the _rest of Eliot’s life._ “– like... tomorrow afternoon or whatever.”

“There is that,” Eliot sighs, still not letting go of Quentin’s hand. 

It feels... grounding, weirdly, to have Eliot touching him. He’d always thought that having your soulmate touch you would feel like touching a live wire, all adrenaline and frenetic energy, but it’s not like that at all. It’s _better_ , it’s calming, a port in the storm, a sturdy foundation. 

Eliot’s staring off into the middle distance, an unreadable expression on his face, when Quentin looks over at him. He’s spent so much of the past couple of days _not_ looking at Eliot, ever since waking up naked next to him, Eliot’s arm across his hip. It’s never exactly escaped Quentin’s notice that Eliot’s beautiful, all lovely sharp edges and soft cascading curls. Even more so now, with the walls he usually keeps up against the world stripped away. _And I get to keep him?_ There’s a shiver of disbelief, because well... he’s _Eliot._

But he’s not letting go of Quentin’s hand, which must mean it’s as grounding for Eliot as it is for Q. Right? 

“Hey,” Quentin breathes, and he can’t take his eyes off Eliot’s face, the way Eliot blinks out of his reverie and looks back over to Q.

“Hey,” he replies, just the smallest smile on his face.

With a surge of courage pulled from somewhere deep inside, Quentin pushes up, brushing his lips against Eliot’s. It’s a soft kiss, a brief warm press of lips against Eliot’s, who makes a quiet little startled sound but kisses back. He _smells_ amazing, sharp and crisp like aftershave, even after all the time in the Neitherlands and Fillory. Quentin wants to _climb into his lap_ and keep kissing, but that seems– unfair, somehow. 

He draws back with a little helpless shrug, meeting Eliot’s eyes, which are surprised and kind of... pleased? A smile curls in the corner of his mouth, and his hand comes up to cup the back of Quentin’s neck, drawing him in for another kiss, longer and slower and deeper. His stubble scraps against Quentin’s lips, and that’s _new_ , oh, Quentin thinks he _likes it._

It’s probably the best kiss of Quentin’s life, to be honest. Which admittedly wasn’t a very high bar, but it’s reassuring nonetheless. He breaks away, once it becomes obvious that he either needs to get some air or just climb onto Eliot and commit to it. Eliot’s looking a little dazed when Q pulls back, which is gratifying to say the least.

“I can’t believe we were too fucked up to _notice_ how good that is, the first time,” Quentin pants, and Eliot’s laughs a little, still staring at Quentin like he can’t quite believe he’s there. 

“Honestly, that’s pretty on brand for me.”

Quentin snorts, tipping his head forward to rest against Eliot’s throat. Eliot’s arms come up around him, and it’s like puzzle pieces slotting together, the way they fit. _This is the one person who was built for me, body and soul,_ Quentin thinks. _How did I not notice?_

“I’m not going to let the Beast kill you,” Quentin murmurs, with a conviction he probably doesn’t have the skill to back up, but it doesn’t matter. He’s never meant anything more in his life. “I’m not going to let this be over before it starts.”

Eliot’s arms tighten reflexively around him. “Don’t die trying,” he says, voice tight, and Quentin swallows. It’s a weird thought, that his life was crucial to someone else now.

“I’ll do my best.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found as portraitofemmy on most places, but check out [twitter](https://twitter.com/portraitofemmy) and [tumblr](https://portraitofemmy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


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